


Yesterday, When the War Ended

by Lavanya_Six



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Complete, Gen, Mentors, One Shot, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-01
Updated: 2011-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-16 00:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavanya_Six/pseuds/Lavanya_Six
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a timeline where Aang didn't get frozen in an iceberg, he has to deal with a world that isn't exhausted enough to accept just <i>any</i> peace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yesterday, When the War Ended

Monk Gyatso found him in the royal garden.

Aang was sitting under a tree's shade, elbows resting on drawn up knees. It was hardly a dignified pose for an adult, let alone the Avatar, but Aang didn't care. Even if he worried about being caught acting childish, he was safe. His mentor was the only other living person for miles around.

"Are you ready to go?" Gyatso asked.

Overhead, a songbird warbled.

Aang glanced up, then returned his focus to the short grass. He dusted his fingers over it. "Did anyone check to make sure they took the grazers with them? I should have asked. It's not right to leave them here."

"They scythe."

"Huh?"

His elderly teacher settled down next to him. "Roku told me once. The gardeners scythe the grass when it gets too long."

"Why?"

"Something about how it was undignified for the Crown Prince to trod on a moo-sow patty."

"What did they do with all the cut grass?"

"I don't know," Gyatso replied. "I never thought to ask."

In the distance, underneath the buzz of insects and chirps of birds, the evacuation horns continued to blast their final warning. Occasionally a sky-bison cut across the sky, searching below for any last-minute stragglers.

Aang rubbed his eyes. "This revenge won't solve anything. Those children... they won't think it's fair that I destroyed their home. Their parents are parents, not war criminals. I'm taking both away and this is going to start all over again one day _and I have no idea how to stop it!"_

 

* *

 

The final peace with the Fire Nation had been hammered out at length, but at every stage he'd had to fight against demands for vengeance - including, to Aang's continuing horror, from the Air Nomads.

The colonies on the Earth Kingdom's coast were razed but, to the Earth King's disgust, only after the colonist had been safely evacuated.

The new Fire Lord had been forced to scuttle his navy's ironclads but, to the Water Tribe's consternation, without their crews aboard.

Those involved in planning and orchestrating his people's near-total extermination were banished to a subarctic prison island, not executed. But the only way he'd gotten the Air Nomad elders to relent on their demand for a trial for _every single soldier_ involved -- which entailed an endless hunt that would rip the world apart -- was to guarantee that the Fire Nation would know the pain of losing a sacred home...

...by exploding the volcano underneath their capital.

 

* *

 

Gyatso wrapped a thin, emaciated arm around his student's shoulders, as if Aang were a boy again and not a grown man with his own child. "Remember you've saved lives. Better jail than execution, and better a city lost than a people." Although which people he spoke of neither airbender precisely knew.

Aang wiped away tears. "Yeah."

When they stood up to leave, they found their robes stained from the green grass. The smell of it stayed with them hours after the garden had been reduced to atoms and ash.


End file.
